Last Call For Press The Meat, Con't

Chuck Todd is leaving NBC panel show staple Meet The Press later this year, with NBC News White House correspondent Karen Welker replacing him.

 

Chuck Todd said on Sunday that he’ll be leaving “Meet the Press” after a tumultuous near-decade of moderating the NBC political panel show, to be replaced in the coming months by Kristen Welker.

Todd, 51, told viewers that “I’ve watched too many friends and family let work consume them before it was too late” and that he’d promised his family he wouldn’t do that.

Todd has often been an online punching bag for critics, including Donald Trump, during a polarized time, and there were rumors that his time at the show would be short when its executive producer was reassigned at the end of last summer, but NBC gave no indication this was anything other than Todd’s decision. It’s unclear when Todd’s last show will be, but he told viewers that this would be his final summer.

“I leave feeling concerned about this moment in history but reassured by the standards we’ve set here,” Todd said. “We didn’t tolerate propagandists, and this network and program never will.”

Welker, a former chief White House correspondent, has been at NBC News in Washington since 2011 and has been Todd’s chief fill-in for the past three years. She drew praise for moderating the final presidential debate between Trump, a Republican, and Joe Biden, a Democrat, in 2020.


Her “sharp questioning of lawmakers is a masterclass in political interviews,” said Rebecca Blumenstein, NBC News president of editorial, in a memo announcing Welker’s elevation on Sunday.

Now Welker, 46, will be thrust into what promises to be another contentious presidential election cycle.

 

Welker will be the first Black host of MTP, and has filled in for Todd a number of times already. She also moderated the second 2020 presidential debate between Biden and Trump and managed to keep a leash on The Donald...to an extent that anyone can.

We'll see how she fares.

Last Call For Greene Washing January 6th

Suddenly, GOP professional clown Marjorie Taylor Greene is extremely concerned about the release of thousands of hours of January 6th security footage to the media, claiming now that it's a security risk for the US Capitol building.

 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has changed her position on the public release of the tapes documenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, warning Friday that their release could “put the security of the Capitol at risk.”

Greene said in an interview on the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice that releasing the video footage publicly would jeopardize the Capitol’s security and endanger those who were present at the Capitol grounds but did not enter the Capitol nor commit crimes.

“And this is our real concern with the video tapes. If we released these video tapes just widely for the public — number one, we put the security of the Capitol at risk, because there’s over 1,700 video cameras,” she said.

“Number two, we also endanger many Americans that were simply standing on the Capitol grounds, maybe never even walked through the Capitol or committed any crimes, but they could have just walked further than where the barrier was simply because the barrier was torn down by the time they got there,” Greene continued.

She said she is concerned about left-wing groups that would use facial-recognition technology to identify those seen in the videos to “hand them over” to the FBI and Justice Department. She said that some people committed violence and broke the law and should be held accountable but many others did not commit crimes.

“Sedition Hunters would spend every second of every day analyzing the videos in order to hunt innocent people that just stood on Capitol grounds on J6,” Greene later tweeted.

 

Now, Greene had no problem with releasing the security footage to Tucker Carlson months ago when Kevin McCarthy did so. And groups like Sedition Hunters have been poring over J6 security footage and identifying uncharged January 6th criminals for years now.

But it's this week that Greene now has a major problem with both, far more worried about the footage being used to identify unprosecuted January 6th suspects.

Unprosecuted January 6th suspect like maybe Greene herself?

Just saying.

Timing is suspicious.

Sunday Long Read: Reading, Writing, Religion

In the wake of Roberts Court decisions like Hobby Lobby and Kennedy v Bremerton on religion in schools and in the workplace, and Texas allowing schools to dump mental health counselors for school chaplains and forcing schools to display the Ten Commandments, the crusade to put Christianity into all public schools is well on the way to becoming reality as this week's Sunday Long Read recounts.

 

After more than a decade living out of state, Jennifer Russell and her husband decided it was time to return home to northwest Louisiana. The couple, both in their early thirties at the time, wanted their two children to get to know their grandparents and to benefit from good public schools. In early 2015, lured by inexpensive rental housing on the Air Force base in the area, the family moved to a town in Bossier Parish, across the Red River from Shreveport, where they’d both grown up. Russell’s daughter started kindergarten that fall; her one-year-old son began day care. At first, her daughter adjusted well to the move and made friends. “It was what every parent wants,” Russell told me.

She had no inkling that her family’s religious identity would prove to be a complication. Russell and her husband both grew up Southern Baptist, a conservative, evangelical Protestant denomination that dominates this area of the Bible Belt. They went to the same church, in fact, and had met because their parents became friends. But she’d abandoned the Baptist church as a young adult, after studying world religions in college and starting to doubt what her faith promoted. Following graduate school and during her first years working as a psychologist, her skepticism grew. It seemed to her, she told me, that believers felt they had a “monopoly on truth, that their way was the only way.” Her husband, too, wanted a more progressive form of Christianity. After moving from Wichita Falls, Texas, the family joined a Unitarian church in Shreveport, a progressive house of worship with Christian roots that incorporates the traditions of many religions.

The first signs of trouble began a few years after the family’s move. Russell’s daughter, who did not want her name used to maintain her privacy, came home from school one day with the report that some boys on the school bus had interrogated her and other children about their religion. They asked each student, “Are you a believer in God?” The girl, who liked attending her Unitarian church but did not believe in God, recalled that she told her questioners, “‘No.’ And they said, ‘You’re going to hell.’”

Russell was dismayed, but she wanted her daughter to respect others’ views. She told her, “There are kids who believe that…. You want to be respectful, but it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily right, either.” Russell and her husband, who did not want to be interviewed for fear of backlash in the workplace, advised their daughter that if someone started talking to her about her faith, to change the subject, put on headphones, or read.

Russell felt it was harder to ignore teachers. In fourth grade, at least twice a week, the girl’s teacher said a prayer aloud in class. Following their teacher’s lead, some children clasped their hands and bowed their heads. “It was a lot about Jesus and God and help us through the day and stuff like that,” said Russell’s daughter, who sat in the back of the class and tried to tune it out.

Increasingly incensed, Russell felt her daughter’s experiences were symptomatic of the school system’s extensive promotion of evangelical Christianity, also evident in routine prayers at school board meetings, graduations and sporting events. “Teachers, administrators, other staff of the schools — they set the temperature in terms of what was accepted,” she told me. Worried that her daughter would become more of a target for her peers, however, she did not complain directly to Bossier Parish schools. Instead, Russell and her husband began to contemplate moving away.

Other families, however, did complain. In 2018, four parents from three families, listed as Does 1–4, sued Bossier Parish schools for promoting religion and coercing students to participate in prayer. They argued that the prayer was a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which calls for a separation of church and state. The lawsuit listed more than 100 church/state violations, including teacher-led prayer in classrooms, prayer at sporting events and faculty- and administrator-led prayer at graduations. “It was all flatly unconstitutional,” said Richard Katskee, the former legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represented the Bossier Parish plaintiffs.

The school system acknowledged most of the incidents, but denied that all of the schools’ actions were unlawful. The following year, a federal court in Louisiana sided with the plaintiffs, and ordered the nearly-23,000-student school district to stop promoting religion.

As Bossier Parish school district was ordered to change, however, the legal landscape was changing, too. A different lawsuit was winding its way through the courts, backed by organizations that had long supported school prayer, over the right of a high school football coach to pray on the field after games. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in favor of the coach, Joe Kennedy, who sued the Bremerton, Washington, school district after it disciplined him when he refused to end the practice of praying at the 50-yard line following games. The majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton stated that the coach had a right to freely exercise his religion because he was praying outside his coaching duties. The decision described Kennedy’s prayer as a quiet, personal act. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, noted that for years the coach had led students in locker-room prayers. Often, students from both teams joined him on the field in his prayers. Katskee, who represented the Bremerton school district, told me that students who declined to participate “got harassed and harangued.”

In Bossier Parish schools, parents, teachers, and students told me, the court order stalled, but didn’t entirely stop, Christian prayer. Now, with a Supreme Court friendly to school prayer, educators and state lawmakers around the country are testing the limits of the strict separation of church and state written into the Constitution. In a handful of states, including Kentucky, Montana and Texas, lawmakers have recently proposed or passed measures attempting to promote faith in schools. In Kentucky, for example, the legislature passed a law in March that would allow teachers to share their religious beliefs in school. A Kentucky lawmaker who sponsored the House bill told local television station Lex 18 that he hoped the measure would “embolden these Christian teachers” who may have been afraid to express themselves in public schools.

Meanwhile, attorneys from organizations that often handle complaints about school prayer told me they are receiving word that the Kennedy ruling is leading to more open proselytizing by teachers. In some states, one attorney said, teachers have set up prayer clubs for students and delivered sermons in class. In at least one case, a school district cited the Kennedy ruling as the reason for prayer at school board meetings.

 

What "personal religious freedom" is being used for of course is the camel's nose under the tent, to allow evangelical Christians to proselytize in schools with the goal of converting kids.

There's no reason to believe this Supreme Court isn't going to eventually decide that Christianity, or the dark, warped, hate-filled version we see many Republicans practicing today, will become not only allowed but encouraged and required in public schools in the very near future.

It's going to be a mess, but it's going to happen, almost certainly.

 

 

The Big Lie, Con't

YouTube has suddenly discovered that allowing election denial videos stuffed with ads under the aegis of "free speech" is a great way to make money off of the burning of American democracy.

 

YouTube on Friday announced a major change in its approach to US election misinformation, saying it will no longer remove videos that make false claims about the 2020 election or previous presidential elections. Starting today, "we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections," YouTube's announcement said.

This is a reversal from YouTube's announcement in December 2020 that it would ban videos falsely claiming that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden. YouTube said at the time that it "will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical US Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors."

The Google subsidiary YouTube made its December 2020 announcement while Trump was spreading a baseless conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from him. Trump's false claims helped fuel the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

YouTube today said it "carefully deliberated" before deciding to drop the policy:

We first instituted a provision of our elections misinformation policy focused on the integrity of past US Presidential elections in December 2020, once the states' safe harbor date for certification had passed. Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today's changed landscape. In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm.

YouTube's policy against false claims still applies to certain elections in other countries, specifically the 2021 German federal election, and the Brazilian presidential elections in 2014, 2018, and 2022.

YouTube said other policies that reduce spread of misinformation about US elections will not be changed. The platform said it will continue to "disallow content aiming to mislead voters about the time, place, means, or eligibility requirements for voting; false claims that could materially discourage voting, including those disputing the validity of voting by mail; and content that encourages others to interfere with democratic processes."

YouTube also said it will continue to promote "authoritative" content about elections. "We are ensuring that when people come to YouTube looking for news and information about elections, they see content from authoritative sources prominently in search and recommendations," YouTube said.

Like other social networks, YouTube suspended Trump's account after the US Capitol attack. YouTube allowed Trump back on in March of this year, saying, "We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election. This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube."

 

 So that's that. 

Looking forward to YouTube removing videos saying that Biden won the election in 2020 after Republicans take over and decide that "authoritative" sources of news are "only what Trump says they are."

No More Military Bragging

Fort Bragg, the home of the US Army Airborne Rangers, is no more.

 

North Carolina’s Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty, as the US Army on Friday redesignated one of the largest military installations in the world.

The renaming was formalized in a ceremony on Friday morning.

The change follows a branch-wide push to rename bases that bear the name of Confederate leaders. It is currently named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, an unpopular Confederate general who garnered a lot of criticism for his hot temper, combative personality and often subpar performance on the field.

Fort Bragg was among nine bases that a congressional commission proposed renaming, but while the others have been – or are expected to be – redesignated after notable people, Fort Liberty will be the only facility named after a value.

“Liberty is about changing the narrative a bit about who we are, but it is not about forgetting who we are or what we’ve done,” said Fort Bragg Garrison Commander Col. John Wilcox in a statement to CNN. “It is about dedicating time and effort to honor those who have made sacrifices along the way.

“Liberty lives here. It is part of our ethos and it’s part of who we are,” he added.

The Army acknowledged concerns from those who argue the history of the base should be preserved, but said on its website that “no act can take away from the heritage this installation’s service members created while stationed here or anywhere else, serving our nation.”

“We understand the original name’s prestige in the eyes of some of the Soldiers, Families, and our nation, was built upon the bravery and dedication of those who served here, not because of an obscure, incompetent, ill-tempered confederate general’s legacy,” the website continued. “Nevertheless, our nation’s representatives felt a need to move on from that name and put the redesignation into law, and we are abiding by that law.”

As part of the redesignation, several streets on the base will also be renamed after service members with “a unique connection” to the military post. These changes are expected to be completed before December 31.

 

"Liberty lives here" is kind of funny because if you've ever actually been to Fayetteville, NC it absolutely is the armpit of the state and it does need to be liberated, but in all seriousness, naming military bases after incompetent Confederates is something that should have been done away with a century ago.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Peach State Edition, Con't

If the Washington Post is correct, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has a significantly bigger case building against Donald Trump than reported previously.

 

An Atlanta-area investigation of alleged election interference by former president Donald Trump and his allies has broadened to include activities in Washington, D.C., and several other states, according to two people with knowledge of the probe — a fresh sign that prosecutors may be building a sprawling case under Georgia’s racketeering laws.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) launched an investigation more than two years ago to examine efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his narrow 2020 defeat in Georgia. Along the way, she has signaled publicly that she may use Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to allege that these efforts amounted to a far-reaching criminal scheme.

In recent days, Willis has sought information related to the Trump campaign hiring two firms to find voter fraud across the United States and then burying their findings when they did not find it, allegations that reach beyond Georgia’s borders, said the two individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the investigation. At least one of the firms has been subpoenaed by Fulton County investigators.

Willis’s investigation is separate from the one at the Department of Justice being led by special counsel Jack Smith, but the two probes have covered some of the same ground. Willis has said she plans to make a charging decision this summer, and she has indicated that such an announcement could come in early August. She has faced stiff criticism from Republicans for investigating the former president, and the ever-widening scope suggests just how ambitious her plans may be.

The state’s RICO statute is among the most expansive in the nation, allowing prosecutors to build racketeering cases around violations of both state and federal laws — and even activities in other states. If Willis does allege a multistate racketeering scheme with Trump at its center, the case could test the bounds of the controversial law and make history in the process. The statute calls for penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

“Georgia’s RICO statute is basically two specified criminal acts that have to be part of a pattern of behavior done with the same intent or to achieve a common result or that have distinguishing characteristics,” said John Malcolm, a former Atlanta-based federal prosecutor who is now a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That’s it. It’s very broad. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to charge a former president, but that also doesn’t mean she can’t do it or won’t do it.”

Among Willis’s latest areas of scrutiny is the Trump campaign’s expenditure of more than $1 million on two firms to study whether electoral fraud occurred in the 2020 election, the two individuals said. The Post first reported earlier this year that the work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, and the campaign never released the findings because the firms, Simpatico Software Systems and Berkeley Research Group, disputed many of Trump’s theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election.

In recent days, Willis’s office has asked both firms for information — not only about Georgia, but about other states as well. Trump contested the 2020 election result in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Ken Block, the CEO of Simpatico Software Systems, declined to comment on what he has turned over to investigators. A lawyer for the Berkeley Research Group also declined to comment. A spokesman for Willis declined to comment on the investigation. Lawyers for Trump also declined to comment.

 

We know Willis has asked Fulton County and state officials to be ready to respond to possible charges later this summer. If Willis really is pursuing a massive RICO case, then all bets are off. Trump could go to prison for the rest of his life, and MAGA America will absolutely revolt.

It has to happen, but again, we're not having any serious conversations about the second and third order effects here, and who is going to be hurt the most by the response.

Insuring The Worst, Ensuring The Worst

As climate change continues to drop more and more intense floods, fires, storms and blizzards, more and more insurance companies will jack up property insurance, or will simply stop issuing new policies altogether, making it impossible to afford to remain in disaster-prone areas.  Florida and California are the most susceptible to this as residents are paying the price. Flood insurance rates in South Florida are tripling in the wake of record Miami flooding and hurricanes last year.

 

Events of the past year have convinced more Florida homeowners of the need to carry flood insurance.

Flooding caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole caught hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners across the state by surprise, and without flood insurance.

Similarly, many homeowners affected by last month’s historic rainfall in eastern Broward County had no flood insurance and learned tragically that damage caused by water rising from the ground was not covered by their normal homeowner insurance.

It’s not just flood victims who are experiencing hard lessons about flood insurance.

Just as homeowners are realizing the increased risks of going without flood coverage, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has released data showing that coverage costs are exploding for properties in coastal areas most vulnerable to flooding.

The cost hikes stem from mandates by Congress to require rates charged by the National Flood Insurance Program, which is run by FEMA, to reflect the cost of flood risk to individual covered properties, and to pay down the program’s deficit, which was $20.5 billion as of last November, according to FEMA.

The result is a new risk pricing model called Risk Rating 2.0, which took effect on Oct. 1, 2021, for new NFIP policies and on April 1, 2022, for renewing policies. Rather than set rates solely based on a property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map, the new approach considers more risk variables such as flood frequency, types of flooding, and distance to a water source, along with individual property characteristics like elevation and the cost to rebuild, FEMA’s website states.

Improved modeling, however, is of little comfort to homeowners who will have to pay more for flood insurance at the same time costs of regular multiperil property insurance are skyrocketing.

Recently, FEMA released a spreadsheet that compared average premiums currently and how high they’ll climb under the new pricing model.

For example, homeowners in Boca Raton’s 33432 ZIP code can look forward to a whopping 229% flood insurance premium increase, from an average $950 per policy to $3,128.

In Broward County, the 33305 ZIP code that includes Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods near the Middle River will pay 209% more, from $1,099 to $3,400.

In the 33315 zip code, which includes Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood that was among the hardest-hit by last month’s flooding, average rates will increase by 64% — from $863 currently to $1,420.

These numbers are averages. Within each ZIP code are less expensive homes with cheaper coverage costs and pricier homes that will cost even more to insure.

Unsurprisingly, homes nearest the coast, particularly in low-lying areas, cost far more to insure than homes on higher ground in western suburban cities.

For example, homeowners in Coral Springs’ 33071 ZIP code are looking at a total premium increase of just 17.6% — from $669 to $787.

FEMA says the new pricing model will also drive down the cost of flood insurance for customers with low-risk characteristics. Yet, none of South Florida’s ZIP codes will see average rates decrease, FEMA’s data shows.

 

And in California, State Farm will no longer issue new policies for any property in the state. 

Across the country, the climate crisis is wreaking havoc on insurance markets. As climate change fuels more intense storms and wildfires, home insurers in disaster-prone states like Texas, Louisiana, and Florida have stopped issuing and renewing policies. In some cases, companies have even gone under in the aftermath of a particularly damaging natural disaster. As a result, homeowners are contending with skyrocketing premium payments and even beginning to struggle to find insurers willing to cover them at all.

The latest sign of the insurance industry tumult came from State Farm, the largest homeowners insurance provider in California. Last week, the company revealed that it would no longer offer policies to new Golden State customers due to “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”

“It’s necessary to take these actions now to improve the company’s financial strength,” the company noted in a press release. State Farm indicated it would continue to keep the customers it already has on its books in California.

California’s insurance industry has been struggling to stay afloat in a state increasingly ravaged by fires and floods. Since 2017, when a series of catastrophic fires caused $33 billion in damages, insurers in the state have lost two decades of underwriting profit. As a result, the cost of homeowners insurance has risen by a quarter since 2015, and insurance companies have been withdrawing coverage in the most fire-prone parts of the state in an attempt to reduce the liability on their books. Meanwhile, Californians who have been unable to secure policies from insurance companies have flocked to the California FAIR Plan, the state-run insurer of last resort. The result is an unstable insurance market that appears to be teetering on the edge of crisis.

 

I expect that large sections of the country will be uninsurable at all in the next few years, especially in coastal states and wildfire states. The federal government will have to step in, or no more buildings and homes will be built in entire regions of the country. And even then, expect a lot less new construction ahead.

 

For example in Arizona, the state is already limiting new construction because Phoenix's water situation is unsustainable. 

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

The state said it would not revoke building permits that have already been issued and is instead counting on new water conservation measures and alternative sources to produce the water necessary for housing developments that have already been approved.

On Thursday, Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Arizona was not immediately running dry and that new construction would continue in major cities like Phoenix. The analysis prepared by the state looked at groundwater levels over the next 100 years.

“We’re going to manage this situation,” she said at a news conference. “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water.”

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

The announcement of a groundwater shortage means Arizona would no longer give developers in some areas of Maricopa County new permits to construct homes that rely on wells for water.

Phoenix and nearby large cities, which must obtain separate permission from state officials for their development plans every 10 to 15 years, would also be denied approval for any homes that rely on groundwater beyond what the state has already authorized.

The decision means cities and developers must look for alternative sources of water to support future development — for example, by trying to buy access to river water from farmers or Native American tribes, many of whom are facing their own shortages. That rush to buy water is likely to rattle the real estate market in Arizona, making homes more expensive and threatening the relatively low housing costs that had made the region a magnet for people from across the country.

“Housing affordability will be a challenge moving forward,” said Spencer Kamps, vice president of legislative affairs for the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, an industry group. He noted that even as the state limits home construction, commercial buildings, factories and other kinds of development can continue.

And as climate shifts render more and more of the country vulnerable to new flooding, fires, storms and disasters, we'll all be paying much higher premiums for property in the future. Eventually, millions of Americans will be stuck in homes that they can't sell because they are in uninsurable areas, and they'll get to wait until they are wiped out. I guarantee you that the people who can afford to move out will do so, leaving ruined economies and neighborhoods behind.

The people who will pay the highest cost will, as always, be those who can least afford it.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

The Senate easily passed the debt ceiling bill late last night as President Biden, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats successfully limited the damage from the GOP-caused debt ceiling hostage crisis.

 

The Senate voted Thursday night to pass a bill that would extend the debt ceiling for two years and establish a two-year budget agreement on a broad bipartisan vote.

The vote was 63-36.

Having already cleared the House on Wednesday, it now goes to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it and avert an economically catastrophic debt default with mere days to spare before Monday's deadline.

The agreement was brokered by Biden, a Democrat, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, after a lengthy stalemate and a frenzied few weeks of negotiations as the U.S. neared the cliff. Biden will address the nation on the bill at 7 p.m. ET Friday.

"America can breathe a sigh of relief. Because in this process we are avoiding default," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "The consequences of default would be catastrophic."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., championed the bill as "an urgent and important step in the right direction — for the health of our economy and the future of our country."

 

The keys here were Democratic messaging that the GOP was wholly responsible for this mess, pounding away at the fact that the same GOP raised the debt ceiling three times under Trump, and that Wall Street donors didn't exactly want an economic collapse as much as the GOP did.

President Biden held fast and the Dems got in array.

Remember this the next time somebody tries to bring up Biden's "cognitive issues".

 

Last Call For Lake Of Fire, Con't

With her state "election fraud" case dismissed by Arizona's supreme court, perennial loser Kari Lake is now trying to manufacture new "evidence" that the governor's race was "stolen" from her with a wholesale lie for a new round of legal appeals.

 

A May 28 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of a Truth Social post from former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. The post includes a clip of people touching and moving voting machines.

"WE CAUGHT THEM," reads Lake's post. "This is VIDEO EVIDENCE from Maricopa County’s own live stream – they didn’t know we were recording – that shows officials breaking into machines AFTER they were tested & sealed. They re-programmed the memory cards right before Election Day, causing 60% of polling locations in GOP areas to stop working. This is SABOTAGE!"

The Instagram post generated over 700 likes in less than a week, and the Truth Social post received over 12,000 likes. Similar posts have garnered hundreds of interactions on Instagram. A Gateway pundit article with a similar claim received over 2,000 shares on Facebook, according to social media insights tool CrowdTangle. 

 

It is of course a massive lie.

 

The video shows election workers inserting new memory cards into tabulation machines as part of standard procedures, according to a Maricopa County election spokesperson. The workers reset the machines to ensure that the memory cards have no votes stored in them. The process is not evidence of sabotage. While printers at some polling places were affected by a glitch on Election Day, the glitches were not related to this process.

Lake, a Republican, ran for governor of Arizona in 2022 and was defeated by Democrat Katie Hobbs by about 17,000 votes. She has since made numerous baseless allegations of election fraud.

Lake’s claim about sabotage is “demonstrably false,” according to Matthew Roberts, the communications manager for the Maricopa County Elections Department. The county also debunked the claim on Twitter.

 

She's lying because she needs to continue to do so in order to fleece her followers for fundraising purposes. She doesn't actually think she's won, she can't actually prove it, and everyone knows it, but the gullible fools are going to give her money anyway.

 

The grift is the only thing that matters.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got the job done yesterday as the debt ceiling deal overwhelmingly passed with bipartisan support, and now GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has to try to save his job.

 

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House voted Wednesday to pass the debt ceiling legislation negotiated by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, sending it to the Senate with days to spare before a potentially disastrous default.

The vote was 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans joining 165 Democrats.

The bill would extend the debt limit for two years alongside a two-year budget agreement if it is signed into law. It is the culmination of months of political warfare and weeks of frenzied negotiations between the two parties that finally broke a lengthy stalemate.

The deal overcame heavy criticism from GOP hard-liners, who argued that its spending cuts and conservative provisions are too weak. It also faced opposition from Democrats, who criticized the added work requirements and nondefense spending cuts negotiated by the two men.

“You are getting so many wins for the American people in this bill,” said McCarthy, R-Calif., who hailed it as a measure that “moves us in the right direction” fiscally. He said his message to fellow Republicans on Wednesday was: “You’re not spending more money. There’s no new government programs. There’s no tax increases. There’s nothing in the bill that you really should be negative about.”

Biden praised its passage.

"This budget agreement is a bipartisan compromise," Biden said in a statement. "Neither side got everything it wanted. That’s the responsibility of governing."

The bill now goes to the Democratic-led Senate, where it needs 60 votes before it can get to Biden’s desk. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have both endorsed it and called for speedy passage.

 

Ironically it was my own normally useless congressman, Thomas Massie, who was the biggest indicator that the bill was going to have the GOP votes needed.  Massie signed off on the bill in the House Rules Committee along with Patrick McHenry, my congressman from back home in NC. Both of these performative contrarians fell right into line when pressed.

Jeffries meanwhile brought the Democrats.

Spokespeople for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) disputed four Democratic sources who told Axios the two leaders had cut a deal for Democrats to help advance the debt ceiling bill to a final vote.

Why it matters: The 52 Democratic votes on a measure to bring the debt ceiling bill to the floor were necessary for the bill's survival after 29 Republicans had voted against moving it forward Wednesday afternoon. The bill eventually was approved on a 314-117 vote.

What we’re hearing: Four Democratic lawmakers said they had been told of a deal, with two saying they believed it involved boosting federal funding for projects in Democrats’ districts — known as earmarks or “community project funding” — if Democrats voted to advance the bill.

What they're saying: McCarthy had told reporters after the initial afternoon vote that he had not cut a deal to ensure the Democratic votes. A spokesperson later told Axios that there was "absolutely no deal" — and that suggestions to the contrary by Democratic lawmakers were "not accurate."

Jeffries' office also denied there was a deal.

"There was no side deal. House Democrats simply did the right thing and made sure the procedural vote passed because failure was not an option," spokesperson Christie Stephenson told Axios.

Earlier, when reporters had asked Jeffries whether there had been a deal, the minority leader said: "House Democrats to the rescue to avoid a dangerous default and help House Republicans get legislation over the finish line that they negotiated themselves."

The context: The GOP resistance in the procedural "rules" vote was an unusual breach of norms — typically the majority party alone is considered responsible for putting a bill on the floor on those votes.

If Democrats hadn't stepped in, the push for a final vote to move toward avoiding a catastrophic default by the U.S. government would have ground to a halt.

 

"What deal?" says the man who learned everything from Nancy Pelosi a sly grin resting on his face,  now having left Kevin McCarthy to face his caucus alone.

 

As the kids say, GIGACHAD move.

The Road To Gilead Still Goes Through Oklahoma

Oklahoma's state Supreme Court has ruled the state's two most recent civil "bounty" law abortion bans unconstitutional, but has left in place a law from 1910 that makes providing for a "miscarriage" a state felony.

 

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down two state laws that ban most abortions because they require a “medical emergency” before a doctor could terminate a pregnancy to save a mother’s life.

In a 6-3 decision, the court said the laws violate the Oklahoma Constitution based on its ruling in March that the constitution provides an inherent right for a woman to terminate a pregnancy to save her own life and does not require the danger to be imminent.

The court has now struck down three strict abortion laws that went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed itself on abortion rights, striking down Roe v. Wade, from 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, from 1992. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization gave states the authority to make abortion laws, and Oklahoma approved some of the strictest in the nation.

The statute left standing after Wednesday was the law approved in 1910, which states: “Every person who administers to any woman, or who prescribes for any woman, or advises or procures any woman to take any medicine, drug or substance, or uses or employs any instrument, or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless the same is necessary to preserve her life, shall be guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for not less than two (2) years nor more than five (5) years.”

Both of the laws struck down Wednesday were passed by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2022 and signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. Stemming from Senate Bill 1603 and House Bill 4327, both laws used civil lawsuits, rather than criminal prosecution, for enforcement. The laws were modeled after ones first approved in Texas, empowering residents to file lawsuits against anyone who might have helped a woman obtain an abortion.

The challenge to the laws was filed by Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, the Tulsa Women’s Reproductive Clinic and other abortion rights groups. The suit named individual county court clerks who would be responsible for filing civil lawsuits to enforce the abortion laws.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court said Wednesday that the House bill used language on medical emergencies identical to that in the law struck down in March, while the Senate bill "provides even more extreme language" than that in the bill that was the subject of the March ruling.

The office of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said Wednesday, "“Despite the court’s decisions today on SB 1503 and HB 4327, Oklahoma’s 1910 law prohibiting abortion remains in place. Except for certain circumstances outlined in that statute, abortion is still unlawful in the State of Oklahoma.”

 

So nothing's really changed in the Sooner State. Providing abortion as medical care in Oklahoma still gets you prison time unless you can prove the woman's life was at stake. Reproductive justice still doesn't exist, and thousands of women will still have to go to free states like Colorado or Illinois to get care.

White it's good to stop this civil bounty nonsense on wombs, note the law says miscarriage, not abortion, so potentially failing to carry a pregnancy to term could be investigated as a criminal felony. 

 

This will continue to be the battle of a generation, again.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The mountain of evidence against Donald Trump that the intelligence information contained in the classified documents he took and kept after he left office were shown to foreign nationals continues to grow exponentially.

 

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

 

The NY Times backing up the CNN story:

 

The tape was made during a meeting Mr. Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the people briefed on the matter. The meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers.

Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Mr. Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Mr. Trump’s aides did. One, Margo Martin, routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year.

On the recording, Mr. Trump began railing about his handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as having guarded against Mr. Trump’s striking Iran in the final days of the presidency, according to the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump then began referencing a document that he had with him, saying that it had been compiled by General Milley and was related to attacking Iran, the people briefed on the matter said. Among other comments, he mentioned his classification abilities during the discussion, one person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump can be heard handling paper on the tape, though it is not clear whether it was the document in question.

The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors have amassed under the special counsel, Jack Smith, since he was appointed in November to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.

Ms. Martin was asked about the recording during a grand jury appearance, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

 

This alone, in a just world, would be the end of Trump.  We do not live in anything close to a just world, but we do live in one where Trump cannot keep his damned mouth shut.

Hopefully we'll see charges soon. We have to maintain that hope, or we're lost.

Space Cases, Con't

NASA will be holding a public meeting on UFOs ahead of an official report later this summer.

 

A NASA panel formed last year to study what the government calls “unidentified aerial phenomena,” commonly termed UFOs, was due to hold its first public meeting on Wednesday, ahead of a report expected in coming weeks.

The 16-member body, assembling experts from fields ranging from physics to astrobiology, was formed last June to examine unclassified UFO sightings and other data collected from civilian government and commercial sectors.

The focus of Wednesday’s four-hour public session “is to hold final deliberations before the agency’s independent study team publishes a report this summer,” NASA said in announcing the meeting.

The panel represents the first such inquiry ever conducted under the auspices of the U.S. space agency for a subject the government once consigned to the exclusive and secretive purview of military and national security officials.

The NASA study is separate from a newly formalized Pentagon-based investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, documented in recent years by military aviators and analyzed by U.S. defense and intelligence officials.

The parallel NASA and Pentagon efforts — both undertaken with some semblance of public scrutiny — highlight a turning point for the government after decades spent deflecting, debunking and discrediting sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, dating back to the 1940s.

The term UFOs, long associated with notions of flying saucers and aliens, has been replaced in government parlance by “UAP.”

While NASA’s science mission was seen by some as promising a more open-minded approach to a topic long treated as taboo by the defense establishment, the U.S. space agency made it known from the start that it was hardly leaping to any conclusions.

“There is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin,” NASA said in announcing the panel’s formation last June.

In its more recent statements, the agency presented a new potential wrinkle to the UAP acronym itself, referring to it as an abbreviation for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” This suggested that sightings other than those that appeared airborne may be included.

 

Too much out there in the universe to discount the notion of life on other words, but as a man much smarter than I am once said:

 

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

― Arthur C. Clarke 

  

We'll see what the NASA panel has to say.

One GOP Chris Out, One GOP Chris In

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart will resign from the House, citing health issues with his wife, Evie.

 

U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart plans to resign his seat in Congress. That announcement could come as early as Wednesday morning.

Multiple sources have confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune that Stewart announced his plan to resign, citing ongoing health issues with his wife. It was unclear what those health issues may be.

First elected by Utahns in 2012, Stewart is serving his 6th term in Congress. In 2022, he won reelection over Democrat Nick Mitchell by over 30 percentage points.

Stewart will be the second member of Utah’s Congressional delegation to resign mid-term in the past six years. Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz gave up his seat in Congress in 2017 to become a pundit on Fox News Channel.

Picking a replacement for the remainder of Stewart’s term will require a special election. Once Stewart officially announces he’s resigning, Gov. Spencer Cox has seven days to set the primary and special election schedule. Under state law, those dates will be the same as this year’s municipal primary and general elections, unless the Legislature appropriates money to hold an election on a different date.

Utah’s 2nd congressional district stretches along the state’s western and southern borders, dissecting Great Salt Lake and running south to St. George. The district includes Utah’s southern portion of the Interstate 15 corridor and Zion National Park. It’s also the state’s largest district, covering more than 40,000 square miles — bigger than the entire state of Indiana.

Stewart’s resignation would temporarily reduce the GOP’s already slim majority in the House until his replacement is selected. There are currently 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the House. As it stands, Republicans can only afford to lose four votes when voting on legislation opposed by every Democrat. Stewart’s impending departure drops that number to three.

The congressman holds seats on the House Appropriations Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

Stewart was widely believed to be preparing to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Mitt Romney. His forthcoming announcement, adding an open House seat to the mix, will likely scramble that calculation.

 

The more immediate result of this resignation means Kevin McCarthy's lifeline holding on to the House Speaker job just got that much shorter. It's unclear whether or not Stewart will stick around long enough to vote on the debt ceiling package. It's possible he may not, especially if he has any future political plans.

 

Meanwhile, another Republican Chris plans to get back into politics next week. 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to announce his 2024 Republican candidacy for president next Tuesday in New Hampshire, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Christie, 60, is a former close Trump ally who now calls the former president a "coward" and "puppet of Putin." He gives traditional Republicans a horse — but seems to have a narrow market in today's GOP.

Driving the news: Christie is expected to make the announcement at a town hall at Saint Anselm College at 6:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Here's what to expect from a Christie candidacy, per his team:

Being joyful and hitting a more hopeful note aimed at America's "exhausted majority.

Being authentic — a happy warrior who speaks his mind, takes risks and is happy to punch Donald Trump in the nose. Christie's recent interviews and New Hampshire town halls aim to recapture the brio of his 2009 governor's race.

Running a national race — "a non-traditional campaign that is highly focused on earned media, mixing it up in the news cycle and engaging Trump," an adviser said. "Will not be geographic dependent, but nimble."

 

We'll need to add "has no chance in hell even if Trump goes to jail."  

 

2024 Republican primary voters don't want a joyful, hopeful candidate who represents the "exhausted majority". They want one who will tirelessly wreak bloody vengeance against their perceived enemies in the Obama/Biden coalition, reducing us to powerless non-entities who won't dare raise a hand or a voice against their white supremacist theocratic "utopia" and couldn't if we wanted to.

They want war. Christie is about at threatening as a Jersey pork roll sammich.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump is not only promising to fire FBI Director Chris Wray (whom Trump himself appointed to the position) but he wants the identities of all the FBI agents and analysts who worked on his investigations so they too can be "purged" from the agency.

 

In recent months, the former president has asked close advisers, including at least one of his personal attorneys, if “we know” all the names of senior FBI agents and Justice Department personnel who have worked on the federal probes into him. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it.

The former president has then privately discussed that should he return to the White House, it is imperative his new Department of Justice “quickly” and “immediately” purge the FBI and DOJ’s ranks of these officials and agents who’ve led the Trump-related criminal investigations, the sources recount. The ex-president has of course dubbed all such probes as illegitimate “witch hunts,” and is now campaigning for the White House on a platform of “retribution” and cleaning house.

Separately, the twice-impeached former president has been saying for many months that on “day one” of his potential second term, he wants FBI director Christopher Wray “out” of the bureau, according to another source familiar with the matter and two people close to Trump. It’s an ironic turn, given that Trump appointed Wray in 2017.

(Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s 2024 primary rival, has also pledged to fire Wray, telling Fox News last week that he’d do so on “day one.”)

But in the years since, Trump came to deeply distrust Wray. By the end of 2020, Trump was venting to senior administration officials that he would make it a top priority to replace Wray “next year,” blasting the director for not wholesale purging the FBI of non-Trump-loyalists. Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, and thus didn’t get his chance to fire Wray in 2021.

During some of the conversations this year, including at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago, some of Trump’s close political allies told him that they are working on figuring out the identities of the FBI and DOJ staff and forming lists, two of the sources relay to Rolling Stone.

 

Specifically, Trump wants the names of everyone in the FBI attached to the ongoing investigation of his classified document mess, and he wants to put them on notice that their careers are over (or worse) once he's reelected. It's overt intimidation, of course. 

I think Marcy Wheeler is correct here.

The NYT did a 3-byline 1,700-word story describing how the number of minor Republican candidates joining the race serves Trump’s purpose.

Its analysis of the numbers and Ron DeSantis’ early failures isn’t bad. But because it is silent about how the expanding field might play in the likelihood of Trump indictments, it is entirely worthless.

 

You would be forgiven, after seven damn years, to think that Trump will not face federal indictments. But the analysis of Trump's political future rests on those potential indictments, and pretending that the investigations are already over is also pretty ludicrous. 

And Trump keeps doing things that add to his record of wrongdoing, like openly threatening to fire the entire investigation team once he's elected.